It’s playing again!

“I think I'll take a moment,

Celebrate my age,

The ending of an era and the turning of a page,

Now it’s time to focus in on where I go from here,

Lord, have mercy on my next thirty years.”

Our local country music stations have found the 1999 hit song and play it every time I turn on a radio. I’ve just waved “good-bye” to one of those “thirty year” marks and now it feels like Phil Vassar and Tim McGraw are chasing me up and down the freeways, shouting at me to get my act together and make sure my next thirty years are better than the last.

They’ve got me thinking. So, I’ve signed up at the fitness center, shifted some work assignments, and visited a couple of friends in the hospital. The concept of “heart attack” has a whole new meaning for me! I’ve even made a list!

1. Spend more time with my dad. Since he’s in California and I’m not, that’ll require some major action.

2. Talk to each of the kids at least once a week. Thank God for the Internet and for nationwide cellular family plans.

3. Sit still and listen to my wife. No newspaper, no magazine, no TV, nothing but Brenda and me. Listening to Brenda will also improve the way I eat, exercise, and rest.

4. Do the same thing with God. More than ever before. I’m currently listening through the writings of Luke and First Samuel, and I’m lovin’ the learnin’!

5. Get to know my neighbors. That includes when we’re striding through our morning walk and they’re out slowly walking Fido, when it looks like they could use help bringing in the trash cans, when we’ve got some extra cookies, when their lawn mower is broken … and it even includes inviting them to church!

There’s one more.

6. “Trust to Grace.” The “woulda, coulda, shouldas” of the last thirty years could consume all other memories at times like this, but Grace chucks them back where they belong. “Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,” Paul wrote, “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13 (NASB). He forgets, and I forget. He calls, and I press on. Because of Him, “my next thirty years will be the best years of my life.”

Dick Duerksen is assistant vice president for mission development at Florida Hospital.

Author's Note: "My Next Thirty Years" is on Tim McGraw’s 1999 album, A Place in the Sun. ©1999 Curb Records, Inc.